If you could learn anything new, what would it be?

[EllieSmumsnet]

Juggling work, family, and everything in between can make studying feel challenging but if you had the chance, what would you love to learn? Maybe it’s a career change, a new skill, or just something you’ve always been curious about.

We know how hard it can be to find time for yourself, so as a little incentive, everyone who joins this thread by 21/04/2025 will have the chance to win £250 to put towards your studies to help make it a little easier. Whether you need study gadgets, coffee credit, textbooks, or even a bit of childcare support.

Thanks and good luck with the prize draw!

MNHQ

Insight T&Cs apply

I’m doing a PGCE in September - so learning to teach. It will be exactly 30 years since I trained for my current occupation, and I’d like a new challenge while also doing something that I think will be worthwhile.

I would really love to properly learn french again. I dabble on Duolingo but I would love a relaxed online class for French

I would also love to study philosophy, psychology, different aspects of history... In fact if I could afford to I would always be studying something!

Yes! Good point, I would love to learn BSL. I have some hearing loss so really want to learn it

Spanish. I have the basics but I'd like to do an exam, GCSE or similar.

if I had all the time and money in the world and not worried about paying the bills I’d love to be an artist. But I do need to learn to paint/draw first 😁. Maybe I could be a modern type artist and just throw some paint splatters on a canvas and call it art!

I want to learn Chinese and other languages.

@sirachaoneverything I did no knowledge to GCSE mandarin Chinese in 8 months at night class. DO NOT do it this way - good grief it was hard. As it was a night class and not part of the official curriculum, it didn't include speaking. "Just" reading, listening and writing - it wasn't pin yin, it was the proper characters 😱. If you're looking at languages (and can disregard you know who), Russian was fab to learn, and only had a few new characters/letters 😊

I would learn bass guitar (and get my nose pierced)

I need paying for my work as I have no chance of inheritance and I do have kids. If I could do everything over again with the knowledge I have now I’d like to have at least some pharmaceutical knowledge followed by herbalism or botany. Right now with what I know speech therapy would be better and there is a need for that. But I will not pay to work for Britain.

I’d like to learn practical skills - I’m not a confident cook and I haven’t a clue about DIY and gardening. Having just moved into a house of my own post-divorce, these sort of skills would be really useful to me.

I would put it towards a course in rushing/caning. There is demand for fixing old chairs, and it would be lovely to work at an old craft.

Art at intermediate level and not online - most courses and workshops are for beginners and there is a huge gap then to degree level.

I think if I had time for learning languages I would learn a bit of Gaelic (both Scottish and Irish) and German - just so I can understand the lyrics in a lot of the folk and goth songs I love.

But more practical for me would be to learn 3D modelling software because I keep opening the apps and then closing them again because I feel overwhelmed. That would be good for creating assets for the digital art I already do.

And cooking healthy food. I am rubbish at it.

There are so many things I’d love to learn to do; sewing, learning a new language, hairdressing, how to dance, how to keep flowers without killing them, how to do magic tricks!

But most of all, I’d love to learn how to sing.

I can’t seem to hear notes so sing off key but I love listening to people sing and wish I could do it.

The piano

I would love to learn coding / programming, and become proficient in AI. Right now, the kids know more about tech than I do!

How to do the Rubic cube, pissed me off for decades.

I would love to learn a language.

I'd do a DIY course. I've done lots of decorating, making shelves, tiling etc, but I'd love to learn some skills from a professional, so that next time I do something, it doesn't take 10 hours of reading and watching YouTube first!

Dancing!😀

I’d like to take an online course in digital marketing. I don’t know if I’ll ever work in that field, but I think that knowledge would be useful in other contexts too.

In a dream world, I’d get a Masters in Language Documentation and Description, then go to Nepal, or another remote part of the world, and document a tiny, endangered language.

I’d do a massage or reiki course. AI will always be a poor substitute for human touch.

Build me a house.

British Sign Language.

I'd love to find a craft I enjoyed and learn to be creative.
If you give me the right materials and something to copy I can do it so I can produce passable versions of other people's creations but I have never had any guidance or tuition with anything artistic to discover my own creativity.